Articles

Weizmann Hamilton of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM - the cwi in
South Africa)

Whilst the government arrogantly insisted that anything above 6% was
unaffordable, a commission on remuneration recommended that the
president’s salary be increased by 57% and those of ministers by between
30% and 50%!

In what independent television channel, ETv, described as the biggest
strike since 1994 (the year the ANC government came to power), the
overwhelming majority of South Africa’s one million public sector
workers started an indefinite mass action campaign in support of a 12%
salary increase on Friday 1 June. The previous Friday, at least
300,000 had demonstrated in protest against the government’s miserly
6% salary offer in what government officials privately admit is the
unions’ most successful mobilisation yet. Weizmann Hamilton of the
Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM - the Socialist Party’s counterpart
in South Africa) reports.

Even unions with no tradition of struggle saw crushing majorities in
favour of strike action. The predominantly mixed race and white National
Professional Teachers Association (Naptosa) president Dave Balt pointed
out on SAFM radio that his union’s members rarely go on strike. This
time, however, Naptosa produced a 90% majority for strike action. 70% of
those balloted in fact want the strike to continue for at least three
days!

In Kwa-Zulu Natal, three Durban hospitals and two in Pietermaritzburg
fell under the complete control of strikers with action continuing over
the weekend. Only between 10% and 20% of health workers reported for
work in a number of Gauteng province hospitals and the army was called
in to maintain some kind of service.

Defiance

This is the workers’ defiant response to the Labour Court interdict
barring health workers from striking under essential service legislation
which the government successfully applied for on the eve of the strike.

Police deployed to the Kwa-Zulu Natal hospitals to enforce the interdict
stood by and watched as health workers blockaded entrances to hospitals.
Themselves barred from striking by the same legislation, police ’worked
to rule’ - interpreting their duties as merely to prevent violence.

Workers’ determination is directed simultaneously at government and
their own leaders. Their anger has been inflamed by the government’s
attitude - a mixture of condescension, arrogance and "kragdadigheid"
(Afrikaans for power-mongering/bullying/intimidation).

In a desperate attempt to undermine the strike’s success, management
intimidated workers with repeated warnings that the "No-Work-No-Pay"
rule would be strictly applied; threats to charge human resources
officers who failed to implement salary deductions with disciplinary
offences; announcements that leave applications coinciding with the
strike would be closely scrutinised and that workers classified as
essential services who struck would be dismissed.

The government has been thumping its chest over its economic
achievements. The longest economic boom ever; a stock exchange breaking
all records; spectacular improvements in tax revenue collection... South
Africa is now experiencing a budget surplus for the first time in
history pre- and post-apartheid!

But despite the boom and the so-called wage increases, in reality
inflation adjustments of the past six years have not prevented a steady
erosion of workers’ purchasing power. Food inflation is running at over
20%; the fuel price is going up once again to be followed almost
certainly by transport and basic commodities as its effect ripples
through the economy.

Under pressure from their members after years of retreats, the union
leaders this time submitted their demands as early as October last year.
These negotiations follow the end of the second of two three-year
multi-term agreements.

The first multi-term was in fact not an agreement at all. The Minister
of Public Service and Administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, at the
time the South African Communist Party deputy chairperson, walked out of
the negotiations and unilaterally imposed a 6% wage increase in 1999.

2004 was a second humiliation for workers as a 5.3% increase was imposed
after the unions rejected an improved offer of 6% and mobilised what was
then the biggest public sector general strike to date, only to
capitulate in a most cowardly fashion.

This time the unions demanded a one-year agreement with a 12% increase
and implementation brought forward to 1 April (as opposed to 1 July) to
coincide with the financial year; the abolition of the first two salary
levels, to establish salary level three as the new entry level and the
reduction of notches between salary levels from 16 to eight. As union
leaders have admitted, members have warned that another capitulation
would result in a membership revolt and their removal.

The government has clearly seriously misjudged the mood. The cowardice
of the union leadership of the past six years led them falsely to
believe that it would be business as usual - a denunciation of the
salary offer, followed perhaps by what former Sunday Times editor Ken
Owen describes contempt-uously as "street theatre" followed by the
customary capitulation.

For the unions there is much more at stake than the 12% wage increase.
The inflation-adjustments of the past six years have called into
question the credibility of the collective bargaining process and the
role of the union leadership. If the Minister of Finance decides in
advance of the salary negotiations what the budget for salaries should
be, what is the point of the negotiations?

For the African National Congress (ANC) this strike could not have come
at a worse time. Relations in the Tripartite Alliance (between the ANC,
Congress of South African Trade Unions and South African Communist
Party) have reached an all-time low exemplified by another bitter
exchange between Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and South
Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki (of the ANC).

Vavi said that government claims about the economy’s success reminded
him of Nazi propaganda. Mbeki replied on his weekly online letter that
Vavi was an agent of the Democratic Alliance (the mainly white
opposition party).

The battle for the succession to the presidency continues to rip the ANC
apart. Over the past month there have been claims of hoax assassination
plots against former deputy president Jacob Zuma and the leaking of a
report of an investigation (not denied by the National Prosecuting
Authority) alleging Zuma’s involvement in a plot with Gaddafi of Libya
in a planned uprising to topple Mbeki!

Background

All of this is occurring against the background of a significant
increase in the number of service delivery protests. In the forefront of
these is the virtual insurrection in the township of Khutsong, near the
mining town of Carletonville 70 kilometres south-west of Johannesburg.

Since the March 2006 elections the township has become a no-go area for
the ANC with all its councillors forced out of the township and running
local government from exile. The community is absolutely determined to
resist their forced incorporation into the province of North West out of
Gauteng province.

Conscious of the political implications on the credibility and cohesion
of the Tripartite Alliance (COSATU’s public sector affiliates make up
60% of unionised workers), the ANC has intervened in a desperate attempt
to find a settlement in the current wage dispute. But this is not 2004.
The union leadership is on notice.

To complicate matters even more for the government, inflation has risen
to 6.3%. This is 0.3% above the wage offer put on the table by a
government claiming that their offer was designed to protect the real
value of workers’ wages.

The unions have agreed to resume negotiations but the mass action
continues with marches and rallies planned in the Western Cape. 80% of
teachers are estimated to have gone on strike.

Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, who is probably now the most hated
minister in Mbeki’s cabinet, has placed an additional R2 billion on the
table and hopes to be in a position to make an announcement of a
settlement and an end to strikes in her budget vote speech on 5 June.

But the success of the 1 June strike will have bolstered union
confidence and only a substantial improvement in the across-the board
salary offer will enable the union leadership to settle. Otherwise the
insults against the minister will continue and the nature of the
confrontation will change from the disciplined but relatively
good-natured march in Johannesburg to the confrontational mood in Cape
Town where tear gas was fired at picketers outside a hospital.

The DSM has called upon Cosatu workers to link up with communities in
struggle against poor service delivery and to revive the traditions of
unity of struggles in the workplace and the townships and to prepare for
a general strike in support of the public sector workers.